How Important It Is for Us to Betake Ourselves to Humility to Make Up Thereby for What Is Wanting to Us in Virtue and Perfection, and That God May Not Humble and Chastise Us

THE blessed St. Bernard says: “Very foolish is he who puts his trust in anything but an attitude of humility, seeing, brethren, that we have all sinned and offended God in many ways, and thus we have no right but to be punished”—Apud Deum ius habere non possumus, quia in multis offendimus omnes. If man should wish to enter into judgment with God, says Job (ix. 3), he will not be able to answer him one thing for a thousand, nor for a thousand charges to plead one good acquittal. “What, then, remains, and what other remedy avails us,” continues St. Bernard, “than to betake ourselves to humility, and supply thereby what is wanting to us in all the rest?” And on account of the great value of this remedy, the saint repeats it again and again in these and like words: “What is wanting to you in point of a good conscience, supply it by shame: and what you lack of fervor and perfection, supply it by blushes”—Quidquid minus est fervoris, humilitas suppleat purae confessionis. St. Dorotheus says that Abbot John also greatly recommended this, and used to say: “Brethren, when through our weakness we cannot labor so much as we would, let us at least humble ourselves, and thereby I trust we shall find ourselves ranked in the number of those who have labored.” When after many sins you find yourself incapacitated by ill health from doing much penance, travel by this plain way of holy humility, for you will find no other more suitable means to your salvation. If it seems you cannot make head in meditation, make head in shame and confusion of yourself; and if it seems you have no talent for great things, go in for humility, and thereby you will make up the deficiency of all things else.

Let us consider, then, how little the Lord asks of us and with how little He is satisfied. He asks that we know and humble ourselves as befits our lowly estate. If God asked for great fasts, great penances, high contemplations, some might excuse themselves, saying that they have no strength for this one, nor talent nor capacity for the other; but there is no reason why anyone should excuse himself from being humble. You cannot say that you have not health or strength to be humble, or talent or capacity for that. St. Bernard says that nothing is easier for one who wishes than to humble himself. We can all do it, and we all have within ourselves matter enough for it. Thy humiliation is in the midst of thee (Mich. vi. 14). Let us, then, betake ourselves to humility, and recognize to our shame what is wanting to us of perfection, and in this way we may move the heart of God to mercy and pardon. Now that you are poor, be humble, and with that you will satisfy God; but to be poor and proud offends Him greatly. Of three things that the Wise Man assigns as things that God much abhors, the first is a man poor and proud (Ecclus. xxv. 4). The like also offends men here on earth.

Further, let us humble ourselves that God may not humble us, a thing that He is wont to do very commonly. If, then, you wish that God may not humble you, humble yourself. This is a very important point and worthy of our very leisurely consideration and reflection. The blessed St. Gregory says: “Do you know how much God loves humility and how much He abhors pride and presumption? He abhors it so much that He permits us, to begin with, to fall into venial sins and many small faults, thereby to teach us that, as we cannot keep ourselves from small sins and temptations, but see ourselves stumbling and falling every day in things trifling and easy to overcome, we may be sure that we have not strength to avoid greater sins, and thus we may not become proud over these greater things, nor attribute anything to ourselves, but ever live in fear and humility, begging the Lord’s grace and favor. The same says St. Bernard, and it is the common doctrine of the saints. St. Augustine on those words of St. John (i. 3), and without him nothing was made; and St. Jerome on that saying of the Prophet Joel: I will give you back the years that the locust and the palmer worm, the mildew and the caterpillar have devoured (Joel ii. 25), say that it was to humble man and tame his pride that God created these little animalculae and small vile worms that are so troublesome to us. God could well have tamed and humbled that proud people of Pharaoh by sending them bears, lions, and snakes; but He chose to tame their pride with the vilest creatures, flies, gnats, and frogs, to humble them more.

Thus, then, that we may live in humility and confusion of face, God permits us to fall into trifling faults, and that these little bits of temptations should sometimes make war upon us, these gnats, these petty affairs, that seem to have in them no body or bulk at all. If we stop to consider attentively what is apt to trouble and disturb us at times, we shall find that they are airy nothings, which, taken for what they are worth, have no body or substance whatever—some silly little word that they have said to us, or the tone in which they said it, or their failure, as we thought, to make enough account of us. Out of a fly skimming through the air one makes a windmill, and putting things together one comes to be very much disturbed and upset. How would it be if God sprang a tiger or a lion upon us, when a gnat is enough to make us so disturbed and restless? How would it be if there came a very severe temptation! Thus we must draw out of these things great humility and shame. And if you draw that, says St. Bernard, it is a mercy of God, and great benefit and bounty on His part, that little vexations do not fail to beset you, and that that is enough to make you humble.

But if these little things are not enough, understand that God will proceed further, to your heavy cost, as He is wont to do. God has such an abhorrence of pride and presumption and such a love for humility, that saints say that by a just and most secret judgment of His own He is apt to permit a man to fall into mortal sins as the price of his humiliation—and not into any sort of sins, but into sins of the flesh, which are the most frightful and foulest of all, for his greater humiliation. As they say, He chastises secret pride by manifest lust. They quote to this effect what St. Paul says of those proud philosophers, whom God for their pride gave over to the desires of their heart. They came to fall into sins of impurity most foul and unmentionable (Rom. i. 24, 26), God so permitting it for their pride, that they might be thoroughly confounded and humbled, seeing themselves turned into beasts, like Nabuchadonosor, with the heart and conduct and behavior of beasts. Who will not fear thee, O King of nations! (Jerem. x. 7). Who will not tremble at this punishment so great that there is none greater outside of hell! And sin is even worse than hell. Who knoweth, O Lord, the power of thine anger, and for fear can number thy wrath? (Psalm Ixxxix. 11).

The saints observe that God practises with us two sorts of mercy, one great and one small. It is a small mercy when He succors us in our small miseries, which are temporal miseries that touch only the body; and His great mercy, which succors us in our great miseries, which are spiritual and regard the soul. So when David saw himself in that great misery, forsaken and cast off by God for the adultery and murder that he had committed, he cries out in loud tones, begging of God great mercy: Have pity upon me, O God, according to thy great mercy (Psalm 1.3). So they say also that there is in God a great anger and a small anger. The small anger is when He chastises us here in the temporal order, with misfortunes and losses of property, honor, health, and other little things which touch only the body. But His great anger is when the chastisement reaches the interior of the soul, according to the words of Jeremy: The sword hath pierced even to the heart (Jerem. iv. 10). And this is what God says by the Prophet Zachary: lam angry with great anger against the arrogant and proud nations (i. 15). When God forsakes a man and lets him fall into mortal sins in punishment and chastisement for other sins, that is the great anger of God, these are the wounds of the divine fury, not of a Father, but of a just and rigorous Judge, of which may be understood that saying of Jeremy: With the wound of an enemy I have struck thee, with a cruel castigation (Jerem. xxx. 14). And so the Wise Man says: A deep pit is the bad woman: he with whom God is angry shall fall into it (Prov. xxii. 14).

Finally, pride is such an evil thing, and God abhors it so much, that the saints say that sometimes it is an advan:

tage to the proud man that God punishes him with this punishment, thereby to cure him of the pride that is in him. So says St. Augustine: “I make bold to say that it is useful and profitable for the proud that God should give them over to fall into some outward and manifest sin, that they may know themselves, and begin to humble themselves and lose confidence in themselves—they who for being well satisfied with themselves and wedded to their own ideas had already fallen by pride, although they did not feel it,” according to the saying of the Wise Man: Pride goeth before a fall, and before ruin the spirit is lifted up (Prov. xvi. 18). St. Basil and St. Gregory say the same.

St. Gregory asks in reference to the sin of David, why God in dealing with those whom He has elected and pre- | destined for life everlasting and exalted by His great gifts, permits them sometimes to fall into sin; yea, into fleshly and foul sins. And he answers that the reason of it is this, that sometimes those who have received great gifts fall into pride; this pride has taken such hold of the innermost regions of their heart that they themselves do not appreciate it, but, pleased with themselves and confident of themselves, they think it is of God. So it happened to the Apostle St. Peter, who did not think that it was pride that made him say those words: Though all should be scandalized at thee, I will not be scandalized (Matt. xxvi. 33). So, then, to cure them of all these fits of pride, so secret and disguised, into which they fall without knowing it, the Lord allows them to fall into such outward and manifest sins, so foul and shameful, because these sins are known better and more readily strike the eye; and by this means the man comes to be aware of the other malady which he had, the malady of secret pride all unbeknown to him, for which he would otherwise have sought no remedy, and so would have been lost; whereas by the manifest fall he comes to know it, humbles himself before God, and does penance both for the one sin and the other, and so finds remedy for both ills. Thus we see in St. Peter that by the outward and manifest fall he came to know the hidden pride that had possessed him and to weep and do penance for both his sins, and so the fall did him good. The same happened to David, and so he says of himself: Jt was a good thing that thou didst humble me, that I might learn thy just enactments (Psalm exviii. 71). Lord, it cost me dear, and I confess it; but it has been a good thing for me that I have been humbled, that I may learn how I ought to serve Thee henceforth, and how I ought to distrust myself. Thus, when a skilled physician is unable to cure a complaint altogether, and by reason of the humor’s being malignant and obstinate he cannot dissipate and overcome it, he then makes it his aim to call and draw it out to the exterior parts of the body, the better to be able to deal with it. So the Lord, to heal certain haughty and rebellious souls, allows them to fall into grave exterior faults, to teach them to know themselves and to humble them; and by this outward breakdown the malignant and pestilent humor that was within is cured. These are God’s great chastisements, the mere hearing of which makes the flesh creep. Lo, I do a word in Israel such that whoever hears it, both his ears shall tingle (I Kings iii. 11).

But, after all, since the Lord is so kind and merciful that He does not make use of this so rigorous punishment, this unhappy and lamentable expedient, without having used other and gentler means, He first sends us other occasions and other softer and gentler remedies to humble us. Sometimes it is sickness, sometimes contradiction and complaint, sometimes disgrace and loss of dignity. And when these temporal things do not suffice to make us humble, He passes on to spiritual things. First to little things, and after that permitting violent and strong temptations, going so far as to make us hang on a thread, and persuade us or make us doubt whether we consent, that thus the man may see and have clear experience that of himself he cannot overcome them, and may know and understand by experience his weakness and the need he has of divine grace, and distrust his own powers and humble himself. And when all this is not enough, then comes that further treatment, so violent and costly, of letting the man be overcome by temptation and fall into mortal sin. Then comes, I say, the cautery, which they call the “fiery button” of hell, that now at least, being thus browbeaten [quebrado los ojos, knocked in the eye], the man may make a reckoning with himself what he really is and humble himself at last, since under the milder treatment he had no mind to do so.

Hereby we see how much it imports us to be humble and not trust in ourselves. Wherefore let everyone take account of himself and see how he profits by the occasions that God sends to humble him, acting as a most tender father and physician, to the end that there may be no need of those other remedies, so violent and so costly. Chastise me, O Lord, with the chastisement of a father; cure my pride with hardships, illnesses, insults and affronts, and by all the humiliations Thou shalt please, and permit me not to fall into mortal sin. Give leave, O Lord, to the devil to wound me in honor and in health, and make me like another Job; but give him not leave to touch my soul. Provided, O Lord, that Thou depart not from me, nor permit me to depart from Thee, any tribulation that may come upon me will do me no harm, but rather help me to gain the humility in which Thou dost take such pleasure.